


On the Lam

by Freyjabee



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mashima Hiro's Fairy Tail Setting, Crime, F/M, Gray Fullbuster - Freeform, Gruvia - Freeform, NSFW, fairy tail - Freeform, juvia lockser - Freeform, mafia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-03-28 07:40:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13899441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Freyjabee/pseuds/Freyjabee
Summary: One's owned by a mafioso, the other's dogged by the law.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work depicts graphic violence and spousal abuse, please don't read if this makes you uncomfortable.

* * *

**_On the Lam_ **

The fluorescent tube light over Juvia's head buzzed loudly and flicked on and off, on and off so quickly, it was almost seizure inducing. It lit the bathroom poorly, but not much light was needed to see the filth in the nooks and crannies. It wasn't hers. She tongued the raised lump in her lip and corrected herself: it never used to be, but now it was home. The previous owner 'flew the coop' Jose said.

What he said and what he meant were two different things. Juvia saw the man's body beaten and bloody in the dumpster when she was carrying a duffle of their clothes in around the back of the building. She thought then that was a stupid place to hide a dead man. That was before Jose set fire to it, using a hot and fast-burning accelerant she didn't know the name to.

No one asked any questions, so they never had to tell any lies. No one _cared_ that a fire burned as long as it didn't take down the building, no one _cared_ where that man went. The only thing anyone seemed to care about was paying the boss and keeping their heads down so the same didn't happen to them. Jose never fucked around. When he made a threat, he made good on it.

Juvia squeezed the scrubby in her hand. It was blue and rough on her skin, really digging in with the vinegar she used to try to scratch out the filth the apartment's previous owner left behind. She kept her eyes to the small sink before her and scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed until a bit of the yellow-encrusted calcium flaked away. Beneath was white porcelain.

"Juvia!"

She jolted hearing her name out of his mouth.

"Juvia!"

She swallowed twice to make her throat work. "Yes?"

"Aren't you finished in there?"

"Almost, Jose."

She heard his footsteps and knew he was coming to make sure she wasn't lying. Juvia's heart pounded. She scrubbed harder. The door was pushed open slowly. Jose had lost some layers, taking off his dark jacket and the orange collared dress shirt. Now he stood in a black tank top that clung to his wiry frame and a pair of jeans slung low on his hips. The black lipstick he'd smeared on his mouth was faded, his eyeliner smudged. He leaned on the door jam, beer bottle clutched in his many-ringed fingers and watched her like a hawk. "You're a little liar, Juvia."

Yes, she was. She'd barely started. There was still blood on the floor and in the bathtub, compliments of the last owner, and needles thrown in the corner beside the toilet, a pile that was coated in dust and filth. She pressed her lips together and looked at Jose through the spotted gilded mirror.

He came into the bathroom like she feared he would and grabbed her by the shoulder. His hands were long-fingered and strong. He pulled her around so she could look into his pit-like eyes. He'd been using, the wide, crazed look in his eye was a dead giveaway. "The last girl that lied to me, I cut loose."

Juvia met his eyes, afraid to look away. "I didn't mean anything by it."

"Then why would you say it?"

"I just—" _Just what?_ She didn't know.

"What?"

Juvia squeezed the scrubby again, vinegar running over her fingers, burning her skin and her nose. _Say something_. She didn't have anything _to_ say. _Apologize?_ Her tongue wouldn't move around the words. The sink dug into her back, cold through her thin blue dress.

His hand came up quick, the open handed slap leaving behind a sting. It wasn't the worst pain she'd ever felt. It was still _shocking_ though.

He grabbed her chin and made her look up again. "When I picked you up off the streets, I looked at you and I thought _'that's going to be a brazen bitch_ '." Spittle flew from his lips and landed on Juvia's cheek. "Did you know that?"

It was a story she'd heard before.

"But then I thought easy, Jose, you got something this girl needs, you can take her home and make her into a _good girl_. And I did. I brought you in, Juvia. I gave you food, I gave you clothes and I gave you a bed. Say thank you, Jose."

All she could say was, "You hurt me." Her mouth was bleeding again from that last time she questioned him.

His mouth curled up meanly. "Hurt you? That slap? You think that hurt?"

She swallowed the blood.

"I think you don't know what that means, Juvia. You want me to show you?"

He slapped her again, fast and hard before she could say a thing.

Juvia couldn't even suck in a breath.

"What about that one? Hurt? How about this?"

She was looking at the floor so she saw his other hand curl around the knife at his hip. It came up, aimed at her face. Her reaction was automatic. She let her knees take her to the ground beneath the blow. Jose lurched away from the door, off balance. Juvia scuttled on all fours, doubly fearful now. Jose didn't like it when she ran away from her punishment.

The only things for it were to either turn back and apologize or run further and faster. Filthy carpet left rug burn on her knees. _Your running?_

Apparently.

Jose's voice ripped out of the bathroom. "Get back here you fat slut."

Juvia looked back over her shoulder, unable to help herself. Jose was in the doorway, back on his feet and looking mean. While he still clutched his knife, there was something in his other hand, too: a porcelain toothbrush holder. It flew and caught Juvia on the shoulder. She barely felt it, too focused on Jose coming out into the hall, using his long legs to his advantage. He was closer than she liked in less time than it took to blink.

Juvia scrabbled to her bare feet and tore through the dark and narrow hallway, following it to the first place she could think of: the bedroom. Jose was hot on her heels, cussing and swinging with his knife. Twice he almost got her, the blade just barely skimming over her skin. Juvia's erratic dodging that had more to do with luck than skill kept her from being split anew.

A huge crash made Juvia look over her shoulder again. Jose had tripped over his own feet, clumsy when he was so high. She counted her lucky stars and used the seconds to get herself into the room. She slammed the door between them.

"You fucking _bitch_ ," Jose yelled. He was back on his feet and lumbering on again.

_Now what?_ There was no lock on the door. _Your trapped, you stupid, stupid girl_ , Juvia berated herself. She spun around, taking in the grimy room with its unmade bed and piles of clothes that mice had made homes out of, the dirt encrusted floors. There was the window, it was so small, though. She knew she'd never fit out of it, her hips were thirty-two inches and the window was twenty-six. She'd checked the first night they'd moved in because he locked her in here for _hours_ and she'd entertained running away. Never mind that it was a three storey drop to the ground below.

Jose hit the door with his body before he figured out how to open it. Juvia had seconds. In fight or flight, she saw her salvation in the form of a bat Jose kept beside the bed for _just in case_. She sprang for it. It wasn't the first time it'd touched her skin. It was the first time she wanted it to, though. Its wooden handle was worn smooth by Jose's hands; the tip was missing huge chunks of wood. It was stained dark, dark brown with dried blood.

She hefted it just as the door opened and Jose stepped through. He looked like the devil himself shadowed against the bathroom light at the end of the hall. Juvia's heart squeezed. What frightened her most was that she couldn't see his eyes. His fingers flexed around his favorite knife.

"You planning on hitting me with that, Juvia?"

Somehow she found the breath to talk. "Don't come any closer."

He did anyway, stepping into the room past the clothes and the dresser and the bed. Juvia sweated. Her breath came in short puffs.

Jose said, "You better hit hard, slut, because you're only getting one chance, then you're really gonna know what hurt feels like."

He lunged.

Juvia took his advice.

He stopped moving after the sixth swing.

She kept on for another half dozen, _just to be sure._

* * *

Cover-up hid a myriad of things. Bruises and scars just to name a few. Juvia was meticulous in that dingy bathroom by the light of that flickering fluorescent tube. She covered the bruises beneath her eyes, those left both by sleepless nights and stress and fists. She covered the bruises on her arms. She even covered the ones on her stomach, trying not to think of Jose's ' _fat slut_ '.

"That was his favourite," she murmured.

A tremor tried to take her.

She put on lipstick. And eyeliner. Dark, dark mascara. And then put product in her hair to catch the curls and keep them from going limp. Finally, she stripped off her blood-dotted dress and pulled on a black one in its place. Finished, she looked in the mirror. She looked just like someone else.

* * *

She looked like a queen of disaster through the foggy glass of a tumbler full of scotch, put together but not like a cup that just came out of a kiln, but like one that had fallen to the floor and had been glued back together. Still beautiful and delicate, but jagged. She flitted from table to table, looking for someone or something. People looked at her, men, women. They turned her away. Her frustration was mounting.

Then her eyes locked on his.

_Here we go,_ Gray thought. He put on a hard face and found somewhere else to look. She came to his table anyway and sat down across from him. She had a drink clutched between her two red hands. The skin on her knuckles was raw and chapped. It looked painful.

"I don't know you." Her voice came out strong even if it was laced with uncertainty.

"Nope," Gray said.

"This is a small town. Are you new or passing through?"

He looked, though he told himself not to. She was attractive with her almond like eyes and full lips and soft sloping nose, her freckle-dusted cheeks, just like he thought. For all of that, there was a ghost in her. "Passing through."

A spark of life came to her haunted eyes. "Will you take me?"

"To where?" he asked warily.

"The next town over, the one after."

"You don't even know which way I'm going," he pointed out.

"Doesn't matter," she replied. "I just need to get out."

He had a policy not to pry. It was a good one. It had _worked_ , kept him safe and off the radar. His stupid mouth moved anyway. "Are you running from something?"

She dodged the question. "Will you take me?"

"That's a big, ' _yeah, I'm running from something_.' And by the looks of things, it's a big load of ' _I don't want to get involved_.'"

Her lip wobbled once before she toughened up. "So you won't take me?"

"No, thanks, lady. I don't need anymore shit in my life."

She didn't beg like he thought she might. She stood and moved on her way. He watched her full hips sway between the narrow tables, wondering what made a girl look hollowed out like that.

There were too many answers to bother prospecting. Gray busied himself with finishing off the rest of his scotch. He'd just smacked the glass down on the table when the waitress came by and handed him another. He didn't have the cash for it, but it'd be like the other dives he'd moved through. Smile nice, get in good with the girls, drink them dry and move on to the next town. His bar tab was well into the hundreds.

"You'll want to stay away from that one." The woman pointed to Gray's prior tablemate.

"And why's that?" The words were out before he could find his apathy.

The waitress said, "She belongs to Jose; he'll break anyone's fingers that touch her."

"Yeah?"

"It's not worth it, sweetie," she said.

It rarely, rarely was.

* * *

Under the guise of going for a smoke, Gray pulled his leather jacket on his body and made for the exit. The familiar garment smelled like cigarettes, booze and blood. Like his old man and his Chevy's tired fabric seats. It was the last thing he'd taken from his ruined home and it would probably be the one thing he kept with him until he died. Except maybe his dad's cross. The old man was religious. Praying on his knees for forgiveness didn't catch Gray's fancy, how could it when he'd chosen the path to sinner, but he wore it anyway. Sentimental, he supposed.

Really, he was too drunk to pull his keys from his pocket and drive to the next motel. He couldn't stay where he was, however, it wouldn't be long until he was tracked here, too.

In the parking lot, he found the girl with the blue hair again. She stood surrounded by a group of men, her arms clutched around her body. She looked scared, but also determined. "I'll—I'll do anything."

One of the men laughed and said something lewd. Gray had heard worse. Hell, he'd _said_ worse and done worse. To girls who wanted worse done to them. This one—she wasn't smiling, she wasn't flirting, she wasn't being brazen. She was an animal backed into a corner, bartering anything she had to barter to get out of town.

_Just keep on walking,_ he thought as he passed them.

"You'd have to be a pretty filthy bitch to convince me to get you out," said one man. He kept going, listing a slew of things he wanted her to do, all worse than the last.

Gray opened his truck door; it took two tries to get the key in the hole. His mother would skin him for driving like he was, but she wasn't around to scold him so he acted like he didn't know what she'd say. The truck started on the second try; the engine purred beautifully. In the wash of the yellow-tinged headlights, the girl and her potential allies came into illumination. The man that had come at her with a list of demands now had his hands on her body, feeling everything she had to feel. She had her lips pinched together and her eyes closed.

_Praying,_ Gray thought. He put the truck in drive. And then just sat there. The man grabbed his dick. And then he started fucking with his zipper. He wouldn't be the first to get an impromptu blowie in the middle of a trashy bar parking lot with his friends standing around, laughing like fucking idiots.

_Keep going._ _You heard that waitress. You don't want to be involved._ He took his foot off the brake and pulled out of his spot.

One of the men in the group pulled the girl's skirt up. She grabbed it and tried to force it back down again; her eyes were open now and there was fury in them. She spat out something Gray was sure was rude. The man fussing with his cock grabbed her by the shoulder and started to force her down.

"Oh, for fuck _sakes_ ," Gray muttered. He coaxed his truck toward the group, not as careful as he could be, putting the front wheel in a pothole so big, it almost swallowed the tire to the fender. It came back out with a whine of the springs. The group's attention fell on him as he put the truck close to the lot of them and rolled down the window. The blue haired girl's eyes fell on him, hope overcoming her. It was sort of pathetic and heartbreaking, honestly. She looked like a whipped dog.

"Still want that ride?"

"Shove off," said the man with his pants more than half undone.

Gray reached over the bench seat and opened the truck door. "Get in. Hurry up."

She stepped toward him. One of the men grabbed her arm and kept her there. "We're taking care of her. Go on."

Gray knew their kind. Short on patience, he reached into his back seat and grabbed out his show-stopper. The shotgun was as old as he was, a pump action twelve gauge that had taken down its fair share of game.

As soon as the men saw the barrel's metal gleaming in the truck's dome light, they dropped the girl's arm and scattered like exposed ants. Soon it was just Gray and the girl and the smokers lounging around the back of the bar who hadn't been privy to their altercation.

The girl stared at the gun. She was scared, but not like she'd been before.

Gray dropped the gun back into its window rack and said, "Are you coming or what?"

She came to the door in jagged steps. She was so slow, Gray almost drove off without her. Stubbornness was the only thing that kept him where he was. He'd taken the time to intervene, he'd be fucked if it was for nothing.

Finally, the girl was close enough to bend and look into the truck. She almost spilled out of her tight black dress; her eyeliner was smudged, her lipstick faded.

"I'm—"

"I don't want to know your name," Gray said. "Just get in."

She bit her lip hard. "Are you a psycho?"

He only stared at her.

Noise coming from the side of the bar made her jolt.

"In or out," Gray said. "I'm tired."

She got in and closed the door behind herself. Her scent filled the truck. Hairspray and a scent he knew all too well. "Do you use?"

"Pardon?" she asked.

"Drugs. Do you have drugs on you? Meth?" The last thing he needed was to get busted for a DUI _and_ get hit with a possession charge on top of everything else if the cop was feeling prickly.

"No."

"You're rank." And dopy. Maybe she was strung out. She didn't seem like she was high, though, at least not on anything he recognized.

She rubbed her hands on her dress. "I'm—it's not from me. I promise. I'm clean."

Gray looked her over one more time. Maybe she was telling the truth, she looked like the kind of girl that was a shitty liar. "Alright." He got the truck into drive again and slowly started pulling out of the dirt and gravel driveway.

The girl asked, "Should you be driving?"

"We're not going far."

"Where are we going?"

"There's a room at Pine Beach with my name on it," Gray said.

"Pine Beach is a motel."

Sure was. "I'm crashing and heading north in the morning. Stay or come, makes no difference to me."

"I'll come," she said.

Gray put his truck on the highway and focused on staying in the lines. He didn't try to make conversation and his passenger didn't, either.

* * *

Pine Beach wasn't near as nice as it sounded. It had a tiny office and a single line of rooms backing against the highway. The transports were loud, but Gray was tired enough he didn't think it was going to be a problem. He went in and got a room with a queen mattress, used a fake name and paid cash. He'd switch licence plates in the next town; it'd be safer just to ditch the truck, he _knew_ it, yet he couldn't bring himself to get rid of it. He and his dad had rebuilt it from scratch; it had been the project that had kept them together through his teens when _everything_ seemed to be fucked.

No, the Chevy would get sandblasted and a new paintjob. She'd have her VIN scratched out. She'd get new licence plates whenever he could swing it. But he wouldn't get rid of her. Maybe it'd be his undoing.

The girl was leaning against the truck's hood when he came back out. Her black dress was caught and pulled by the growing breeze. She didn't look so much like the cowering girl surrounded by bullying men waiting to take advantage of her; she looked like she could be something more, if she was allowed to be.

Summer's first thunderstorm let loose its first raindrop; it hit Gray on the cheek, cool and slightly sobering. He stopped looking at her. "This way."

She followed him to room number one. He had more luck getting the key in this lock. Inside was just as unimpressive as Gray thought it would be. It was small, with a reclining turquoise chair, a bed made with faded red sheets, (it looked more like a double than a queen. He wasn't going to squabble) an ancient tube TV and a bathroom right off the bedroom. Beside the burnished—yet scratched—headboard were twin nightstands. The one on the right was the only one with a lamp on it. Gray moved through the room as the girl closed the door and flicked it on. He almost thought it wasn't going to work, the bulb flick, flick, flicked before steadying out.

Outside, the sky gave into the storm. Rain began to fall heavily. Gray took off his coat and threw it on the bed, then worked on his tan work boots. At this level, he was able to see his roommate's shoes as well. they were tall pumps, well made for a girl that smelled like methamphetamine. So was her dress for that matter.

_Shouldn't have gotten involved,_ Gray thought again as he deciphered what that meant.

"I don't have any money," she said.

Gray straightened. "I didn't ask for any, did I?"

"What do you want?"

He paused unbuttoning his shirt and met her eyes. "What makes you think I want anything?"

"Everyone wants something."

"To go to sleep. To wake up tomorrow with my wallet and my smokes and my truck. For you not to stick a blade in my throat at night," Gray said.

The girl wrung her hands together. "I'm not a thief."

"Yeah, I don't know that, do I?" He went to the washroom before she could reply. It was just as small and shitty as the room, poorly lit and dirty, the sink's faucets tarnished, the toilet's porcelain yellow, the bathtub—well, there was a lot wrong with the bathtub.

"No shower here," Gray muttered, looking at the hairs caught in the soap scum along the bathtub's rim. He pissed and washed his hands, then his face, wetting his hair, too.

Coming out again, he saw the girl had curled herself up on the recliner, making herself small. She'd taken off her shoes and used her coat as a blanket of sorts.

"Bed's big enough to share."

She looked up from where she'd been staring into the darkened world, watching lightning flash across the sky. That wariness was back in her eyes. Gray wasn't going to bother saying anything else, let her be cold and uncomfortable—it wasn't like the bed was going to be much better, it looked lumpy and hard—he'd already established he was stupid, though. "I don't know what you came from before, but I won't make you do anything you don't want to do."

She went back to staring out the window. Gray sighed and tugged off his pants. He didn't look to see if she stared, red cheeked and scared. He climbed beneath the sheets, turned off the light and turned away from her toward the far wall.

Long silent minutes passed. Gray's eyes were starting to close when he heard her get up and pad over to the washroom. She closed herself inside. Water ran and splashed, she sniffled. When she came out again, she was in the thin black shift she'd been wearing beneath her dress. It tugged tight on her curves. Gray looked and looked at her standing in the washroom's doorway, telling himself not to and doing it anyway.

"Do you like the way I look?" she asked.

A fool would say no.

She saw the answer on his face. She came closer to the bed, dropping her clothing on the floor beside it and put her knee on the mattress next to Gray's chest. Sensing what she had in mind, Gray said, "I told you I didn't need anything from you. I won't ask you to do the stuff those guys were."

She hesitated. "Yes."

"Just… lie down and go to sleep."

She still just sat there, hands curled in the hem of her shift.

"What?" Gray asked.

"You're a nice guy. It's been a long time since I've been with someone nice."

_Nice?_ If only she knew the truth. "Maybe your bar's just set low."

She touched his chest. Gray grabbed her wrist and held her loosely, stopping the tease of her fingers on his skin. The girl said, "I thought you liked the way I looked?"

He searched her eyes. Gray still didn't know what he was looking for or if he'd found it when she bent and pressed their mouths together. She tasted like her drink—long island if he remembered. Her lips didn't quiver. Maybe this was a snap decision. She didn't think twice about it, however, and really, recently, Gray had been living beneath the philosophy of _why the fuck not?_ Chances were, his days as a free man were numbered.

She deepened the kiss when Gray let her, puffing gently and feeling his chest again. Her fingers got stuck in the old bullet wound on his shoulder, that puckered and white skin. She pulled back enough to look at it, then moved on, kissing his neck instead of asking questions. Gray rolled on his back and let it happen, stopping her only as she approached his hips so he could reach into his bag and pull out a condom. Though his days may have been numbered, there was no reason to cut them any shorter by having to check into the hospital with a bad case of syphilis.

The girl saw what he was fussing with and took it from his hands. She palmed and kissed his body, drawing nearer and nearer, pushing the sheets aside as she went. Gray closed his eyes and rode out a shiver caused by her nip through his shorts. She teased, kissing and biting through the material for long enough that he thought he would go crazy.

"Fuck," he swore. That seemed to be the trigger she was waiting for. She pulled his shorts down, grabbing his erection and stroking him thrice. Then she tore open the condom package and rolled it over his body expertly. Her lips landed on the tip. They were warm. Gray imagined what they'd feel like without the latex barrier between them. It was its own kind of torture, one that had a kind of relief. Her mouth locked firmly around him, her tongue caressed his shaft, then she was sucking slowly, laboriously, thoroughly.

Gray locked his hands behind his head and lifted himself high enough that he could watch this girl whose name he didn't know do what he never asked. He tried to see through her motives. Maybe she wanted to lull him into comfort and rob him as he suggested. Maybe she couldn't pay, as she said, and thought this was a good way to make amends even after he told her not to bother. Maybe she just had a bad day and wanted to work out some frustration. When it came down to it, he didn't want to ask because asking meant getting invested. It didn't matter if it was a lot or a little; even a penny had worth and he was feeling like a cheap bastard these days.

Her breasts pushed into his legs. Gray gathered her hair to the side and watched this stranger pleasure him. He was harder than stone and didn't think he could get any stiffer.

That was until she released him and tugged her shift's shoulder straps off her shoulders and pushed it down below her breasts. Her skin was milk-white and warm against his. She gathered her breasts together and took him deep, deep into her mouth, moaning and puffing. Gray got harder again. He closed his eyes and listened, not too hard because then he could hear the people two rooms over screaming, but enough.

She sucked until he pulsed on her tongue, close, then came away and climbed up his body. Her shift got caught on her wide hips. Gray lifted it and helped her straddle him. She took him inside and tried to get right to work; he stopped her, finding the bud between her legs and massaging it. She was wet and slick and undeniably surprised to feel his hands on her body. And wasn't that a shame? She was the kind of girl that he liked to touch, full and soft and loud when she got to moaning. He drew clockwise circles and lifted himself enough to take one of her pert nipples into his mouth. Her skin tasted like salt and iron. He liked that, too.

Her moans turned frantic in minutes; Gray felt her tightening on his cock and worked his thumb faster, arched his hips, finally moving. He buried himself to the base half a dozen times before she let go and came and had to close his eyes and slow so he didn't do the same. She squeezed on him like wet velvet; his cock was soaked.

She rode out the orgasm, milking it for all it was worth before she finally sat back, drawing her breasts away from Gray's greedy tongue. Gray leaned back, locking his hands behind his head again. The girl straightened her spine and spread her legs wide, exposing herself. She grabbed her knees and started to rock. Gray helped out when she showed signs of tiring by taking her by the thighs and holding her up while he slammed into her. She came twice like that. She was building up to a third when he came. If she was disappointed, she didn't say a word. She sat with him inside her while she clutched her elbows and caught her breath. Eventually, she went to the washroom to get cleaned up. Gray rolled off the condom and dumped it in the garbage beside the bed, then used Kleenex to finish the job. The girl came out again.

"I'm not paying you," Gray said. Maybe he was crass.

She hesitated. "I'm not asking for payment."

Good. He laid back as she came to the bed in hesitant steps. Watching her, he imagined what those truncated movements meant: she expected him to turn her away or to yell or to call her something nasty? Or maybe she just realized that he was still a stranger, a stranger with a shotgun in his truck and a bullet wound on his chest that was just 'passing through' her town.

He rolled over and closed his eyes. Let her do what she wanted, think what she wanted. Her weight dropped into the bed beside him. She turned over so they were back to back. They were quiet.

Gray was almost asleep when she whispered, "Have you ever hit anyone?"

It was a strange question. He answered honestly. "No one that didn't deserve it."

"A girl?"

"…No."

"Because you didn't find any that deserved it?"

"What kind of question is that?" Gray asked, less sleepy and more irritated. She flinched at the harshness in his voice. Gray made it go gentle. "No one's beating anyone. Just go to sleep."

"Good night," she said eventually.

Gray didn't respond.

* * *

The sound of the TV talking quietly woke Gray from a deep slumber. He looked through bleary eyes and saw the girl sitting on the end of the bed, her thumbnail trapped between her teeth. She stared raptly at the screen, looking at a picture of his face.

Gray closed his eyes again, wondering what now. She knew he was awake, had felt his shifting.

"You're a criminal."

"Yeah." His voice was hoarse with sleep, dry from the booze and muffled by the musty pillow he stuffed over his head.

"The lady says you killed a man named Del."

"Yeah," Gray said again.

She asked, "Are you going to kill me?"

Gray pulled up the pillow to look at her. She didn't _seem_ all that scared. "Did you gun down my family and put me in the hospital for two months?"

"Is that what that scar is?" she asked, looking at Gray's chest. "A bullet wound?"

"Yeah."

She turned more properly in the early morning light, allowing her bruised face and arms to be seen. Hollowly, she said, "Some men deserve to die."

"Yeah," Gray said two heartbeats later. "They do."

She got a crazy, watery smile. "My boyfriend was a Mafioso. He beat me. I killed him with a baseball bat and stuffed him in the closet. He's been there for a day."

It was so ludicrous, Gray laughed. When he sobered, he asked, "What's your name?"

"Juvia," she responded.

"Gray."

Her fingers curled in the blankets. "My granny used to tell me about a little French town on the boarder," she said. "Low-key."

Gray sat up and reached for his truck keys. "Sounds good to me."


	2. Chapter 2

Heavy storm clouds hung over a little city called Saint Jude, bringing with them humidity and gusts of cold wind that broke up summer's hot breath. Gray sweated on his hands and knees down in front of the grill of a blue truck. Though the sun was setting, the gravel path into the farm field was a heating pad and the radiator ticked and hot air coiled out from beneath the hood of _his_ truck parked in front of the other, hitting his back and making him more uncomfortable. A bead of sweat ran down his temple.

Heels tapped rhythmically together on the red bumper. "Do you want Juvia to try?"

"Have you ever lifted a licence plate before?" It wasn't rocket science but it did take a certain amount of quickness. He wasn't setting a good example. It wasn't his fault, though. First, he didn't have the right socket, then the bolts were rusty.

"No."

"Just keep a lookout. When I'm done with this one, you take the plates off my truck and we'll swap."

"Okay." Her heels tapped together again in the same rhythm.

Gray got the first bolt off. He breathed relief. How likely was it that this stretch of highway was going to remain deserted for very long? _And what about the farmer_? It was getting late and he was probably done for the day but Gray was paranoid.

The first drop of rain smacked loudly against the pavement. The second hit Gray behind the ear. He was almost relieved but that hurt, it fell with such force.

"Raindrops are such funny things." Juvia's voice was airy and distant.

"Mmhm."

Gray heard the scrape of fingertips over metal and imagined her running her hands over the hood, palm-down. "They haven't feet or haven't wings."

That would be ridiculous.

"Yet they sail through the air. With the greatest of ease."

Gray looked back over his shoulder. Juvia was lying on the hood of the truck with her arms splayed out like she was waiting to be crucified, not watching the road at all. Her blue hair whipped back and forth in the quickening gale.

"And," she finished, "dance on the street, wherever they please."

"What is that?"

"A little poem. Do you like it?"

It seemed well enough but when it was spoken in her melodic voice, so dead-pan, it was actually a little bit eerie. "It's pretty."

Juvia pushed herself up on the hood so she could see him work. She was still in the dress he'd picked her up in and the material fluttered around her legs just as much as it could. It reminded Gray of blackbirds fighting to get away.

Thunder rumbled and it was close. Gray set the socket on the next bolt and wrenched. The rusty old bolt broke off and the licence plate fell free. Juvia slid off the hood of the truck and pulled a screwdriver out from between her breasts. She crouched down to his level and worked on getting Gray's last licence plate free while he did the one on the back. Those went quicker, less abused by salt and water. By the time he returned, Juvia was done and handing over the screwdriver. He fixed up the rear licence plate and changed the sticker over so everything was valid, then put his old license plates on the farm truck.

Careless people were those that got caught.

Juvia got into the front of the truck through the driver's door and slid over to the passenger's side. Gray got in after her and rolled back out onto the road.

The sky really opened up and raindrops suicided against the windshield. Juvia wasn't afraid of the rain. She undid her window and leaned back in her seat with her eyes closed while the water fell to her skin. The bruises had faded around her eyes and her chest, her arms were free and clear of any marks, and she looked like a goddess, and acted like one, too, aloof and indifferent. She was a far cry from the woman he met four days ago—most of the time, anyway. Sometimes, that woman still made an appearance. Like yesterday, when the truck got a flat. Gray may have overreacted and Juvia monitored him like he was a nuclear weapon, waiting to explode.

He didn't apologize to her while he put on the spare; silence seemed to be the best route when Juvia was involved. Eventually, she decided he wasn't going to take his rage out on her and reached out to him in the strange, detached way Juvia had. She opened up the yogurt she'd swiped from the grocery store, got a glob of it on her spoon, and put it in his mouth. The tension vanished and they were fine again.

Juvia sank down in her seat and folded her legs up on the dash.

"You're getting wet."

"Do you mind?"

No, he liked the way her skin glistened.

"Touch me?" she said like she read his mind.

Gray reached over and slid his fingers over her kneecap. Her skin was cool and smooth. She wiggled down a little further, inviting him to touch higher, and shot a furtive look his way. He still couldn't tell if she did this as some kind of payment, just like he couldn't tell if she liked doing this as he was driving because _he_ liked doing it or if it honestly turned her on.

Between her thighs was warm. He ran his finger over her centre and Juvia spread her legs more. Her underwear was wet and he supposed he had his answer. He touched her as he drove, one eye on the road, the other on her. Sometimes, she'd grab her breasts and push them up and together. When she really wanted his attention, she'd take them out. It made the kilometres whirl past. One minute, he was in the town of Floret, the next, Juvia was coming and thirty kilometres had gone by. She looked pleased with herself; Gray was, too, but frustrated. He wanted more.

Juvia asked in a husky voice, "How far will we go?"

Gray looked at a road sign and read three town names on it. Tolan, Kingsway, and Rideau Valley. The last was the furthest away at three hundred kilometres. "Rideau?"

She pouted. "That's so far."

Sometimes, she'd focus on him and seemed to forget that they were on the run. Sometimes, he did, too. It was dangerous to forget, though. "I don't want to be anywhere near that town in case that farmer reports his plates missing."

Juvia sobered some and lifted the straps of her bra. When she was decent again, she pulled out the phone Gray had paid a lot of money to have off the grid and typed in the town name. "It's small. Five thousand people. And it's off the highway."

Small enough and out of the way enough that maybe no one would be looking for them there.

"Sounds good to me." Gray made the turn onto the highway and set his cruise to the speed limit. He wouldn't get caught because he was doing one ten in a hundred zone. No, if he got caught it was going to be for something really stupid, like watching an almost-stranger pleasure herself in his passenger's seat.

She looked so melancholy after he denied her. He didn't like it. "We just have to be careful."

"So the police don't catch us."

"Yeah."

Pensive replaced melancholy. "How did you kill him?"

He went over a multitude of answers ranging everywhere from, ' _don't ask me that stuff_ ,' to the truth. He settled on, "It doesn't matter how a guy dies, as long as he's dead."

She had opinions on the matter that she chose not to share and Gray didn't care to ask. Dead was dead was dead.

Feeling restless, he cranked on his police scanner. The local dispatch was a woman, and her voice filled the cab of the truck as she relayed calls to officers. Traffic stops, domestic disturbances that Juvia pretended she didn't hear, and the occasional call to a bar. Routine stuff that made the passing of hillocks and highway slow-going. Gray wished Juvia was still feeling playful.

An hour went by before the yellow light of a gas station lit up the highway. Juvia announced, "I have to pee."

Gray checked the gas gauge. They were running low, anyway. He reached into the back and got a baseball hat before anything and fixed it over his head. Then he slowed down just enough that he wouldn't get flattened by the transport behind them and swung into the gas station, to the pump furthest from the store. The less his truck could be examined, the better.

There was only one other car in at the pumps, an old Chrysler van. It moved when they pulled up, going toward the other side of the parking lot and stopping by the highway exit.

Juvia hopped out and hurried inside, Gray got to pumping, filling up two jerry cans in the back first. He preferred to get his gas and run but he'd have to pay tonight, with Juvia going inside. The best time to hit and quit was in the middle of the day, at a busy gas station. Sometimes, if he was clever and he was quick and the gas attendant was slow, he could sneak into the pump right after someone left and pump an extra ten bucks into his tank on their card with no one noticing a thing.

The gas nozzle clunked. His tank was full. Gray got out his wallet before he got inside and took out his money, too. He didn't need anyone seeing his licence accidentally.

A bell jingled overhead and his shoes squeaked on the tiled floor; the ground outside was still wet. Juvia's prints led to the bathroom. The door was still closed. Gray directed his attention to the counter. It was empty. He stood by its front and waited, passing the time by glancing up at the TV screen above.

First was a radar shot of a storm system moving through. It looked wicked. They were on the leading edge of it, and it was chasing them north toward that little French town Juvia sometimes talked about, sometimes sang about. The storm's centre looked violent and red and the clouds were slowly churning in a clockwise manner.

Something banged in the back of the store. "Hello?" Gray called. "I got gas, I want to pay and hit the road again."

No response came.

The TV screen flicked over and lettering began to scroll. _Notorious Gang Leader Jose Porla Found Beaten to Death in his Apartment_. Underneath was _Though the police have named no suspects, Mister Porla's girlfriend is wanted for questioning._ A picture of Juvia popped up on screen. Gray chewed his cheek, looking between the back of the store, the bathroom, and the TV.

The banging got closer, then the door opened and a dishevelled man came through, bald on top of his head, sparse hair on the sides. Gray's guts churned. He glanced up at the TV again; Juvia's face was gone and instead, there was a house fire.

Gray got no apology. "Smokes?"

It was an expensive habit to have when you were on the lam but just then, he needed something to calm his nerves. "Redwing."

"Don't have that brand."

"Jackson, then."

A gust of wind knocked the powerlines and made the lights inside flicker. The man lifted his eyes to the ceiling drolly and said, "Don't have those, either."

"Give me whatever, then." Honestly. He wanted to get out of there before he knew if his face would be on the local station, too, and he wanted to keep ahead of this storm front.

The man slid a package of nondescript cigarettes across the counter. Gray snatched up a pack of matches, too, and counted out his money.

The clerk didn't immediately punch Gray's purchases into the till. "Where are you headed?"

"Lac du Trésor," Gray named a town way east. Lying was easy now.

"Got some ways ahead of you. You should buy some snacks."

Though he was frustrated at the clerk's poorly veiled attempt to get his money, Gray grabbed a bag of beef jerky and added that to his tab, and a chocolate bar for Juvia. The man rung him up. He gathered everything up and got back outside where the wind was picking up even more.

Clogs of dirt and dust bunnies whipped across the parking lot and tried to get in his eyes. Gray held his hat and circled the truck. He stopped short of entering, though. The driver's back door was open and his shotgun was missing from its rack. It hadn't gone very far, if that decisive one-two cock was anything to go by, or the nose pressing into his back. He sighed, dropped his goods and held up his hands.

"Give me your money." The person sounded young. A boy, maybe, no older than nineteen.

"I just spent it all on shitty jerky," Gray said.

"Empty your pockets."

"Look—"

"I'm not fucking around." The gun was shaking, like the boy's voice.

"Me, neither."

The gun was jammed into his kidney and for a moment, Gray was breathless. That hurt. "Empty your fucking pockets."

Inside, Gray saw the bathroom door open and Juvia came out. She didn't come outside immediately, though. She was looking at something. The TV. And it'd be best if she just stayed that way. Gray said, "Alright," and lowered his hands gradually. In his right pocket was a fiver, separate from his other cash. He handed that over and hoped that would serve as a distraction.

The kid took the bait, snapping the bill from his hand and scrutinizing it. "Is that it?"

Gray kept his voice even and calm. "That's everything I have."

"What about her?" Juvia had been spotted. She still stared at the TV inside, though, and made no move to come out into the parking lot. _What the fuck is she doing?_ Gray couldn't tell if he was glad she was loitering because that kept her out of the way or angry because what happened when the clerk stopped pulling his dick in the back of the store and came out to see if she was stealing anything and saw her up on the TV?

"Everything she's got is there on the floor of the truck."

His robber wasn't very good at what he did. He eased back just a little to see where Gray pointed, and when he did that, Gray stepped aside and back and brought his elbow back with great force. The boy was about his height so the elbow landed against his nose. Blood gushed forward, the boy rushed back and tripped over the gas pump curb. He stumbled, the gas pump caught him.

Unskilled or not, he could take a hit well enough and remembered that he had the shotgun in his hand. He stood again and used it not as the weapon it was designed to be but as a bludgeoning tool and swung at Gray. Gray dodged. The driver's window broke out and glass sprinkled over the parking lot and was swept across the ground by the storm front.

Gray stared at it, flabbergasted. The truck was his father's. And now where the fuck was he going to get a window from? He couldn't just walk into places anymore and get shit like that fixed.

He saw in the mirror the descending gun barrel and moved enough that it hit him in the shoulder and not in the temple. His arm felt momentarily useless. The boy lifted the gun again and was about to bring it down but instead, he fell sideways like a sack of bricks, revealing Juvia with a rusty tire iron. Merciless, she struck again, and twice more, getting him in the temple and his eyes turned unseeing.

She raised the iron again.

"No, Juvia!" Gray had to grab her wrists and fight with her. She was single-minded and strong. It took tearing the weapon away and throwing it into the bed of the truck to get her to see anything but her target, and then, it wasn't for very long. As soon as she realized what she'd done, she dropped her eyes and looked at the mess of blood pooling on the pavement, running through shattered glass like a river running through pebbles.

Her eyes locked on Gray's and her shoulders trembled. Gray pushed her toward the driver's door, sensing the coming turmoil. "Get in the truck."

Juvia mindlessly obeyed and then it was just him and the wind and the boy.

_Is he dead?_

It was hard to tell.

Gray crouched and touched his jugular. A long, long moment passed, and then he felt the thready thump of a heart.

His knees felt weak with relief.

_But now what_? He couldn't leave him there on the ground. When he woke—if—he'd report this to the police and they'd be on their trail.

... _then_?

He didn't know.

_Think, think, think._

This wasn't supposed to fucking happen.

_Think, think, think._ And _act, act, act._ Inaction was the world's biggest killer.

Gray looked over the hood of the truck toward the storefront. Behind the desk was still empty. He couldn't tell if that was because they'd been spotted and the man was calling the police or if he actually hadn't come out at all. Whatever the case, they had to get out of there, and they couldn't just leave a boy lying by the gas pumps.

_Think, think, think._

His eyes swept the parking lot and landed on the van; it now sat behind the store, its lights off but its motor running. And in the back of the truck was a roll of soggy duct tape.

Even as he lifted the boy over his good shoulder, Gray knew how bad of an idea this was. The safest thing to do would be to kill him but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Not in cold blood like that.

_He'll likely succumb to his injuries_ , Gray thought. Heads were hardy until they'd been bludgeoned, then they were susceptible to innumerable issues, each worse than the last.

_Dead men don't speak, so be thankful,_ he thought with as much callousness as he could muster.

"What do we do?" Juvia leaned out of the truck, breaking what was turning into a cyclical argument.

"Follow me in the truck," Gray answered and hurried across the parking lot.

The stench of stale marijuana flooded out of the van along with cold, air-conditioned air. The back seats were a mess, a sleeping bag and magazines and food wrappers. Either he was a runaway or he was road tripping. The former was more probable, considering how he chose to get his money.

Gray put the boy in the passenger's seat and then got in the driver's seat and pulled out. The truck followed on his tail as Gray hunted for a remote place. It wasn't very hard up in this country, a small cottage road appearing out of rows of thick, towering trees. Gray took it, and a bumpy service road off of that and parked the van by a choppy lake.

Then came the hard part, where he taped up the boy's arms and legs, and then wrapped the duct tape around his body and the seat, too, trapping him. He'd leave the boy's cell phone, found in his jean pocket, close enough that if he was clever enough and asked it to make a call using a voice command, it would, providing it still worked for that kind of stuff.

Juvia pulled in behind him and the van's cab was illuminated in the truck's headlights. The boy looked sickly pale in that glow, blood trekking down the side of his face. Gray couldn't tell if he was breathing. He could have checked for a pulse but instead took a bottle of vodka that had been rolling around in the back. A sip calmed his nerves. He'd save the rest for when he wasn't trying to drive straight down the road.

He turned off the van, put the keys also within reaching distance, and then wondered if he shouldn't have. Honestly, if he was trying not to get caught, he could do a better job.

* * *

The motel Gray chose had a run-down log front and curling shingles, thin, dusty windows and a vending machine that blinked on and off, its selection sparse and questionably old. The driveway was gravel and crunched beneath his tires. He parked in the overflow around the back of the motel, out of view of the road, and turned to Juvia.

"I need you to go in."

"What?" she asked dazedly.

"I need you to go in and book a room. Can you do that?"

"Why me? You always do that."

For five days now. Not even, because two of those days they'd slept in the truck in shifts. "I have blood on me. I need you to. We have to clean up and we need somewhere private to do it. Okay?"

He thought she'd cry. She stiffened her lip, though, and pulled down the visor. She checked herself in the mirror, fixed her hair, adjusted her dress. There were parts of the black material that looked stiff and tacky but black always hid red, didn't it?

Gray counted out a hundred dollars and hoped that was enough. Juvia took it from him with hands that no longer shook. It seemed she just needed direction.

Gray watched her cross the parking lot, half expecting her to take the money and run. Gravel made her ankles wobble but she didn't fall. Her dress still fluttered around her legs; it looked more hectic now, though, a flock of blackbirds all fussing all at once to take flight, fighting her. Her hair lifted and tangled. He was forming an image in his mind. It fell apart before he could grasp it; she was inside the building and out of sight.

A long time passed, so long, in fact, that Gray started to think that something had gone wrong. His fingers twitched around the ignition. He recognized the impulse: he was considering starting the truck and leaving her there. It wouldn't be right. But it'd be easier. He wasn't just running for his crimes anymore, he was trying to run for two of hers, too, and he didn't know if he could run fast enough.

_It was you that put the kid in that van. You're in it together._

He didn't get a chance to argue the stance. The door opened and Juvia came out. She walked at a moderate pace, hips twitching, so Gray figured not everything was lost, and there was a key in her hand. He pulled the key from the ignition and stepped out into the stormy weather.

"Room seven," Juvia said. Gray grabbed the tire iron out of the bed and followed her under the maroon flapping awning and into a room that smelled like mildew and perfume.

It looked like every other dive he'd run through over the last few weeks. There were paisley bedsheets and matching drapes and a TV that you had to squint to see if you were sitting at the head of the twin bed.

Gray locked the door, then brought his shoes and the tire iron into the bathroom. Juvia joined him and together, they washed away the blood, Gray using the bathtub, Juvia the sink. Gray watched her work out of the corner of his eye. She scrubbed a spot on his shirt hard enough that her hands chafed and turned red, her mouth turned down in a snarl that was depreciating and frightened.

"Juvia." She didn't respond so Gray stood and touched her wrist. She jumped and when her eyes came to him, she was wearing the same manic expression she had when she told him she'd killed her boyfriend and stuffed him in a closet.

"Are you okay?"

She looked _relieved_ he'd asked. "I hurt someone," she said. "But he was trying to hurt you."

"He was," Gray agreed.

"So Juvia's done nothing wrong."

"Thanks for stepping in." He'd thank her, even if the law wouldn't.

"He might wake and tell people about us."

Gray voiced what really had been plaguing her conscience. "And he might not wake at all."

"That would be best."

Juvia returned to scrubbing his boots. Gray stripped his shirt one-handed because lifting his left arm above his head was agony—that kid got him good—and his pants and stepped into the shower with the tire iron. The water occasionally went cold when Juvia picked up and rinsed his clothes. He watched her through the sheer shower curtain. Sometimes, she'd wipe her eyes. He didn't know what to say to make her feel better. He didn't feel all that guilty for what he'd done. He was freaking out about what he didn't.

She hung up his shirt on the towel rack and then did her own dress and shawl, then left him alone. Gray took his time, washing away road grime, cigarette smoke, sweat and blood. His thoughts kept circling back to the gas station no matter what he did. They shouldn't have stopped. He _knew_ better. He did. They should have found some junker parked near the road and swiped some gas from its tank. Juvia could have gone pee in the bush.

He cranked off the water, dried, and exited the room just as Juvia was stripping off her bra and underwear and climbing into the bed. She had to shimmy her hips to be successful, she was so plump. He liked it. She seemed to be ashamed at first but, gradually, she was becoming more comfortable.

Both items she dropped on the floor, then she peeled back the bedsheets and climbed inside, on her side, facing Gray. She no longer looked like the blackbird queen or a water goddess. She looked like a woman with hair dyed blue fanning over the pillow, blonde roots growing in. She looked displaced and lost.

Gray got rid of his towel, shut out the light, and joined her. The sheets were polyester and stiff as the hospital sheets he'd lived with for six long months. Juvia's skin was a sharp contrast, soft and warm and smelling of iron.

She came closer when he turned on his side and put his arm out. Her head rested on his bicep and Gray put his hand in her hair. It was knotty and got stuck in his fingers but he liked it for the same crazy reason he liked her. It was a mess. A mess he could focus on and slowly, slowly untangle, even if he didn't know that he needed to untangle it. His fingers moved methodically, starting at the ends and working north. Occasionally, lightning would strike and make her skin gleam like ice; the storm was in full-swing now.

Juvia kept her eyes open and watched him attentively. Gray told her, "You should go to sleep; I want to get out early tomorrow."

"I can't close my eyes," she said plainly. "Every time I do I see that boy falling."

He sighed. "You did the right thing, Juvia."

"Yes. He was trying to hurt you," Juvia said again. "Juvia had to."

Gray again thought about all the things they did wrong. Like, keep the truck. The gas attendant had seen it. That piece of metal was going to be Gray's fucking undoing but he didn't want to part with it. He also should have checked for cameras.

Honestly. _He knew better_. It was basic fucking criminality. These were the mistakes that people made that got them caught.

_So go back?_

But he'd driven so far and what would he do if there were cameras? If the owner hadn't reported anything yet, he'd have to go in, take the recordings, and think about a permanent way to make the owner quiet.

He'd have to step even _further_ away from the man he used to be.

Juvia stared at him for a while more, too absorbed in her own turmoil to care much about his. "Jose used to say we had to do bad things sometimes because there was no god. People needed to be punished."

"Sometimes." Not that he liked agreeing with Jose but even wicked people could be right once in a while.

Juvia asked, "Do you believe in God?"

"I don't know." There was a cross on his neck that didn't belong to him. There were countless memories of church that were way more important to the last woman in his life. Faith never kept her safe.

"Juvia doesn't." She said it vehemently. "Juvia will take care of Juvia now."

The saying God helped people who helped themselves came to mind.

Juvia touched his bruised shoulder with her fingers and then her lips. Gray felt a flat pain, almost numb. Manageable, though, if he didn't jar it or it wasn't touched too much. He tightened his good arm around her and pulled her in closer. A day ago he wouldn't feel comfortable doing this, she was just a girl he slept with sometimes and was running with. But secrets had ways to bring people together.

_They also have the capacity to tear them apart_ , Gray reminded himself. Juvia was different, though. Manic and desperate-seeming, sometimes, but also steadfast when she committed to a thing. He didn't think she'd be the one to tear their unlikely partnership to shreds.

She settled in and Gray closed his eyes and tried not to think of how strange his life was now.

Dream came in a violent wave. He watched his mother get shot in the middle and his father mostly through the throat. And then everyone else. He heard _"Daddy—_ " He felt blood spray his cheek and wet his fingers. He felt his shoulder burst when a bullet came for him, too.

He woke in a cold sweat, sitting upright and all at once alert. His shoulder was aching and his heart was knocking against his ribs, trying to find a way out. He looked left and right, (for a gunman) trying to get his bearings. The room was unfamiliar, the girl sitting beside him with the blankets down around her bare waist was barely any better. They'd only been together for a few days and it was only within the last two that Gray noticed the freckles on her shoulders and the earring stabbed through the top of her ear. The little things that made Juvia Juvia and not some other random girl he picked up out of a parking lot.

Her expression was wary like he was an irritated snake readying a strike. She didn't flinch, per se, when he lifted his hands and scrubbed his face and pushed his hair back, but she watched and waited in the way the long-time abused did.

Gray rose and washed some of the clamminess from his body. She was still upright when he returned, watching him go to the vodka bottle he'd swiped and swigging down more than enough to make his head spin and then to put him into what he hoped would be a dreamless sleep, and didn't lay down again until he did.

"You always have nightmares," she stated.

"When we get to Dormont, we'll figure out a way to get a place with two beds." Gray couldn't see her face with only the pale streetlamp coming through the curtains, so he couldn't tell how she felt about staying with him past that.

"Juvia doesn't mind," she said at last and wiggled closer, earlier reserve vanished. Her fingers tickled up his arm and over his shoulder and down his back. Gray closed his eyes. It was a world of red nightmares behind them, everything happening at high-speed. A small, thin body running through a massive house, sidestepping the _dead_ , small, paint-soaked hands reaching for his neck, _"Daddy!"_ on the air. And _pop, pop, pop._ With his eyes open, he just saw soft blue, the glint of Juvia's hair. Somehow, she was an island and a stormy sea.

Gray turned onto his back and invited her to touch his chest. She put herself against his arm and traced his collarbone and his shoulders, careful not to touch the bullet wound on one or press too hard on the bruise on the other, and then she went down to his pectorals and his abs.

The alcohol was starting to do its job. His head was getting fuzzy and Juvia's fingers were wicking away his worries one touch at a time, getting lower and lower. She put herself in his lap when she felt the results of her soft touch and continued from there. He touched her legs and between, her hips and her belly and her breasts. She still stifled her moans. Gray was getting good at teasing them out anyway. When he could, he swallowed them back, her mouth on his. Eventually, his dream faded, the boy he'd left restrained in his van faded, and Juvia made sure he was tired enough to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

_'And finally, a tragic end to the month-long hunt for seventeen-year-old runaway, Romeo Conbolt. Earlier this morning, cottagers in the Teel Region located a van parked off the main road where the boy's body was discovered. An investigation into his death is on-going but authorities have released that they suspect foul play is involved_.'

Romeo was his name. _Romeo_. It sounded melodic, like the sound of her tire iron smacking into his head. Rhythmic. He had been handsome before he ran away, in the way gangly kids were before they grew into adults. He would have been something above average if she hadn't taken his life.

 _He was going to hurt us_. The picture on screen didn't say so. _That_ Romeo was smiling. He looked to be suburbia-happy. So what happened? Analyzing that was a long, dark road Juvia didn't want to travel down.

The picture on screen changed and her own eyes looked back at her. She looked dead on screen. That picture was a mug shot taken after she'd been pulled over for an expired licence plate sticker. The officer had stuck his head in the car, smelled meth on Jose in the passenger's seat, and searched. He was a belligerent slob as he always was and they both were charged. She hated him. She hated that his picture was put up beside hers. She hated his long nose and his long, mean face, and his stupid long moustache and his long eyebrows. Hated him. _Hated_.

Fingers touched the ends of Juvia's hair. She stiffened first, then she remembered that Jose was _dead_ and she had a different bed partner. Gray reached around her and shut the TV off. Juvia then noticed that the small motel room was filled the scent of cigarette smoke. She turned; Gray had managed to smoke half of it in the time she'd been stewing in front of the TV and she never noticed.

"They found the boy. His name was Romeo."

Gray drew on his cigarette. "I heard."

"He's dead."

The smoke came out of his nose. "What's done is done."

He was right, of course, but Juvia didn't just feel the guilt, she choked on it. Romeo Conbolt wasn't the same level of bad as Jose had been. _Maybe he_ could _have been?_ No, no, that was all _wrong_. She wrung her hands together so hard, some small chapped places split and burned.

Gray asked, "What do you need to feel better?"

A psychologist would be nice. A million dollars. Freedom from Jose's ghost. A time machine to go back and change the day she first met him. She would have leaned into his car and told him to keep on driving. The next street corner was better for men like him.

"Juvia? Tell me what you need."

She needed to feel like she wasn't alone. "Will you tell me about the man that killed your family?"

He didn't want to, she could see. But he opened his mouth and said, "His name was Del. He and my father had a business deal and my old man took it sideways just because he thought he could."

"A business deal that people kill over?"

He shrugged; it was forced casual. "A lot of money was on the line, I guess. I never paid much attention. They wanted me to be good, so I was. I was fucking model good. I went to school, got my degree and stayed out of the business until the business came to me."

Juvia realized, "You were criminals."

"My _father_ was a criminal. I got caught in the backsplash." He cleared his throat before continuing. "Del killed my family. I killed him. My career was over, the end."

She never thought to ask about his career. "Who were you before?"

He snorted. "The dead stay dead, Juvia, leave it."

He wouldn't budge on the matter. She cast her eyes to the wall and imagined all the things he could have been once upon a time even as she said, "You're right." Maybe one day, he'd tell her.

Gray's fingers touched the ends of her hair. She thought distantly of his cigarette and, ludicrously, wondered if he was burning her. Or if he was going to. Jose would for asking questions. Jose wouldn't hesitate.

Gray's palm brushed over her naked back, warm and rough with callouses, but gentle, and she knew the comparison was fundamentally flawed. Gray was a killer but that's where their similarities stopped.

She leaned back into his hand. His other arm looped around her bare waist and brought her back into his chest. His skin was cool after being outside of the blankets all that time; the same temperature as hers. His mouth tasted like cigarettes and old vodka. She thought she should mind but didn't. It was better than old meth.

Gray's kiss had started out as a means to distract her, that was blatantly obvious from the get-go; it worked better than Juvia imagined. Thrills moved through her. She kissed him deeper to the sound of rain on the window, the drops screaming out a torrent over the rumble of thunder. She loved the rain. The wind and the wet and the violent electrical storms that sometimes came with them. They made her feel free and powerful and like someone completely different.

Juvia let herself fall into Mother Nature's roar. Gray grabbed her by the waist and the hip. His cigarette did burn her, just brushed over her skin. Juvia thought it didn't hurt as much as it should. Gray realized what he'd done, though, and stabbed it out on the nightstand. Stray cinders charred a hole in the blanket. It was one of many and more would follow before the blanket ended up in the dump.

With his hands free, Gray took Juvia up again and pulled her over his body and onto the bed beside him. The only bruises he left on her were the ones he made with his mouth, and those never hurt at all. Her breasts were marked, though, just below her nipple and on the downwards curve toward her belly, and her thighs. He nibbled and hit her with hot breath and used his tongue. It had been a long time since she'd had _that_. Juvia lifted herself up to watch but spent most of her time with her head tipped back and her eyes on the ceiling.

Her first orgasm came and took with it a small node of guilt. His fingers entered her and wicked away the next. He never seemed satisfied until she was yelling. Juvia had never been very vocal but the urge built in her chest until she just had to gasp loudly. He felt her shaking and kept at it. Eventually, Juvia's hips bucked and she came again.

Gray came out of her and hunted for a condom. Juvia sat up and stroked him until the very last moment. He pushed her back down when he was ready, took her by her legs and held her with them hitched over his arms. It could have been the shared and filthy secret between them, but he felt better today, more hers than he had previously. He wasn't _just_ a stranger she'd run away with, she _knew_ him. Not intimately, but she knew the worst parts and those were the most revealing.

Gray fucked her fast and let up for nothing. He was soaked in sweat and the cords stood out on his neck the closer to orgasm he came. He leaned forward, bending her legs so he could grip her breasts. That contact wasn't enough. He kissed her. Juvia liked the feeling of his stubble, and his breaths exploding over her cheek, she even liked his sweat getting her wet. He was danger without too much risk, violent without being mean. She needed it. She needed it like she needed to breathe because she couldn't let go of the past so easy.

Gray slammed into her one final time. Juvia felt the condom swell as he emptied into it and liked it. Gray made her think and do and like strange things that she'd never before.

He untangled his arms and her legs and put his damp hands into her hair. They shared gasped breaths and Juvia thought she knew him a little bit better still. He kissed her. And kissed her and kissed her. She never wanted him to stop.

All good things came to an end, though. The sun was rising through a thick blanket of cloud, making the world a grey, storm-tossed place, and they needed to leave soon.

Juvia showered first; Gray got in after her. by the time she was finished dressing, he was done and out in the room again, never really giving her mind time to wander toward the tire iron they'd brought in with them and were taking out again or the spots on her dress that had been blood before she'd rinsed it off.

She put her heels back on and peeked outside. It was wickedly windy, bits of saturated newspaper clung to the ground and tore before it was lifted into the air again and pushed across the parking lot. Plastic had an easier time moving, skidding over the pavement with dull _clunk, clunk, clunk_ noises.

Gray picked up the motel keys and handed them over. "You return these; I'll bring the truck around."

"Okay."

A huge gust of wind grabbed the door out of her hand and banged it open against the side of the motel. Juvia sacrificed holding down her dress for running. Her shoes filled with water in no time and she was soaked through. And then she was freezing because the motel office had their air conditioner going like it was still thirty-five degrees out.

The man at the front desk looked just as scruffy and used today as he had last night, his jowls drooping and slathered in three-day scruff that didn't look nearly as handsome as Gray's. He was as pasty as a maggot and spoke with a thick eastern drawl that was hard for her brain to pick apart.

"Checkin' _hout?_ "

 _"Hout?"_ Had she even spoken to him last night? Everything from those hours before seemed like a lifetime ago.

"Leavin', lass. Yous leavin'?"

"Yes," she affirmed.

The man looked at her sideways. "I'm goin'ta need you to fill out some paperwork. I'll be keepin' your deposit, too."

"Why?"

"Neighbours says they heard you and your boy causing ruckus. Breaking things. You get into fights?"

"No," Juvia shook her head. "That wasn't us."

"I only had two rooms filled last night, and the others are regulars."

If it was her money, she would have just told him to keep it sans paperwork but it was Gray's and she knew it wasn't an infinite resource. "Then they're lying."

"What I meant to say, girly, is that it's my sister. She isn't a liar. Fill out the paperwork. I need a number and an address in case the deposit doesn't cover the damage. I'll know more when I get my boy in there to look at it."

Gray's red truck pulled up to the front door. He honked his horn, two short blasts.

"I have to go."

"No, not yet you don't." He spun in his chair and reached into a desk drawer behind him. His jeans were too small and too tight and pulled down on his maggoty-coloured back, too. Juvia suddenly hated him like she hated Jose. She spun away from the counter but didn't get far. The back of her dress was grabbed and yanked. She came up short; material ripped.

Outside, Gray laid on his horn. Juvia hardly heard it. She yelled and swung back her elbow. It hit teeth. The man released her. The old Juvia would have run. This Juvia didn't yet. She spun and grabbed the first thing she could reach—a phone. It hit the man in the temple and he stumbled back blindly, gripping the side of his melon-sized head.

"You don't _grab_ people that don't want to be grabbed," Juvia spat and hit him again. He raised his hands to protect his face. Juvia left phone-sized bruises on them. She only stopped when the man fell back onto the floor and was more difficult to reach. He looked at her between his arms with wide eyes and breathed heavily.

Feeling vindicated, Juvia pressed a button on the till and the bottom popped out like a tired and grey tongue. There was cash in there, not much but enough to replace what Gray had spent with a little bit of extra on top. She stuffed it all in her bra and spun on her heel. She only then noticed that Gray was laying on the horn and rolling down the parking lot.

Juvia pushed open the door and saw in the distance the glow of cherry lights through the driving rain. The sight seeded panic. She had to run to catch up and Gray had to slam on the brakes for her to climb in. The door was still open and her leg was still out when he jammed on the gas and the old eight-cylinder engine shot forward through the parking lot, over the saturated grass, and onto the road. His police scanner was going wild, cops talking back and forth, dispatch speaking over them.

Juvia pulled her leg in and closed the door. "What's happening?"

"Cops pulled video from the fucking gas station," Gray swore.

Juvia turned around in her seat and looked out the back of the truck. The tires kicked up a grey wall of water but through it, she saw the pulsing lights of police cars. They were a few kilometers back, only seen when she and Gray went over a large hill. They were catching up, though, and as soon as they saw the mess she'd made in the motel office, they'd know which way they went on this long, country highway. "How did they know where to find us, though?"

"The motel owner must have seen your face on the news and called it in for the reward." He swore again.

Juvia sank against her door; her eyes were burning. "I shouldn't have gone in for the key. I ruined everything."

"And I should have taken care of the gas attendant and checked for the videotapes," Gray said. "Fucking up was a group effort."

Juvia got quiet.

Gray said, "We're going to be okay."

Juvia knew he said it to make her feel better. The funny thing was, knowing that didn't make his efforts any less effective. She watched the cop cars pull into the motel and relaxed some. That would slow them up for a few minutes.

Gray reached out to her and took her hand. He pulled her close to his side and she felt like Bonnie and Clyde, racing down the highway at break-neck speed, tires gliding over puddles before finding purchase on the road again.

* * *

Time had a funny way of easing you into an idea. After Juvia first killed Jose, she'd spent time in the washroom, looking at herself and learning that she wasn't just a doll for his fucking pleasure, she wasn't just a punching bag.

After she'd agreed to climb into Gray's truck and go with him to Pine Beach, it took her _time_ to realize that he was actually someone nice. She reconciled what she wanted to do with nice men and then she did it.

They'd been on the lam for days, and though it was harrowing, the drawn-out _hours_ had made her come to terms with the idea. Her entire life as Juvia Lockser was over. She could never be that person again. The time she was given to _process_ allowed Juvia to see that she even thought she was okay with it. Juvia Lockser was the girl that allowed Jose to put his hands on her. She was scared. She was useless.

 _This_ Juvia was on the brink of becoming someone special. Someone powerful. Time really did heal everything; she was eager for more of it.

She leaned over and put a kiss on Gray's neck. His hand had been resting loosely on her leg. His fingers tightened now. Juvia pressed her cheek on his shoulder and watched the road disappear beneath the tires. They were coming up on a town and the scanner was chattering again. Gray eased his foot off the gas pedal and turned down a dirt road.

"We're an hour away from the border but the cops have every major road closed off. I need you to listen to what the scanner's saying and look up alternate routes while I drive."

Juvia's stomach was in pleasant knots. There was no denying the thrill of it all. "Okay."

Gray killed the buzz a bit by finding the speed limit and setting his cruise in an attempt to not draw unwanted attention. His eyes kept flicking to the mirrors and to the other concession roads, too, when the roadside would open up enough to catch the odd glimpse. Only once did Juvia see another cop car, and that was two concessions over. "We should drop the truck, too."

"You love this truck."

"It's a ball and chain. It's always been a fucking ball and chain. I knew _better_."

"Alright."

There was a problem, though, the further away from town they got and closer to the border, the more the roads were logging roads or farm laneways with no houses on the lots. The closest thing to a vehicle they passed was a tractor. There was no being subtle in that.

The police reported they'd set up a roadblock on Highway Seven. Running parallel to it, though, was a dirt path the locals had the audacity to call Ferry Road. It abutted the large river that split up provinces. On the other side of the river, it was called Rue Ferry. Juvia knew the area, she used to sit on the West side and look over to the East and imagine that was where her grandmother spent the majority of her time when she was little and had time to spare. Why _wouldn't_ she? The Lockser women had always had a love affair with water.

"If we can get here, we can cross over the river."

"They might have provincial police waiting for us on the other side," Gray said.

Juvia shook her head. "Not here, not likely. I'm sure they'll be expecting us to cross over somewhere more major. This is a canoe trail, at best. See?" She held up the map for him. Gray took his eyes off the road to read. The truck swerved. He corrected. "We'll get over on the other side and we can find a place to hide. There're fishing camps all over the place there. We'll break into one and—" She trailed off because she honestly didn't know what the _longevity_ was here. What was the next step? What _future_ did they have? They were fugitives.

 _Don't think like that._ If she did, she'd just give up.

Gray said, "You feel good about crossing there?"

"Everywhere they've set up so far has been a major intersection," Juvia pressed. "This is our best bet, I'm sure of it."

He swiped back his damp hair from his forehead. "Okay. Okay, let's do it."

"You have to go left at the next intersection." Juvia's words were drowned out by _whoosh, whoosh, whoosh_. The truck rattled. She looked all around and saw nothing but rainy roads. A voice permeated the car, though, hugely loud.

" _Pull over and surrender peacefully or we will use force."_

Juvia gripped the door handle. "What the hell is that?"

"Helicopter." Gray's face was ash-white. "They have a fucking helicopter." His foot feathered the brake. Juvia's heart leapt into her throat.

"You can't stop. You have to keep going, they'll arrest us."

"They have a _helicopter_."

"We're almost there!" Juvia insisted. "We can do this."

Gray flexed his jaw and jammed on the brakes and cranked the wheel. Juvia held onto the dash; the truck fishtailed violently. Gray gunned the gas again just as a cruiser with its cherries beaming came out of a crossroad. Gray didn't slow an ounce, clipping the front end and sending the car spinning into the ditch. Juvia felt wild laughter balloon in her chest. She had to let it out.

Another car appeared on their tail, right up their bumper. Gray told Juvia, "Seatbelt."

What an absurd thing to request but Juvia thought she'd do anything he wanted with that intense look on his face. She loved it, abruptly and fiercely. She strapped herself in and just as soon as Gray heard the _click_ , he stomped on the brake.

The truck's tires squealed; metal crunched. Gray touched the gas again and momentum saved them from too much damage. Juvia looked out the back window; the cop car's grill was spewing white fog. Above, the helicopter rose up. Her heart was hammering again.

"Do you think they're going to shoot us down?"

"The helicopter's not equipped with weapons," Gray informed her. "They're only coordinating with the ground forces." She smiled. His glower quashed it. "We're still fucked." And the scanner was going wild. "They're putting down stingers."

"What?"

"Road spikes." He forced his hand through his hair again. "Fuck. Fuck. Is there another road?"

Juvia looked at her map. They were so close to Ferry Road. Another kilometer. But just ahead, was the spiral of police lights. "What happens when we hit road spikes?"

"They fuck our tires. We'll have to stop."

"Can we make it another kilometer on the rims?"

His lip disappeared, bitten between his teeth. "I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not."

"We'll try," she said and it felt like a command. Confident Juvia was the Juvia that got things done. "Speed up."

She heard his foot hit the floor; the truck's engine growled. It took them a bit longer to get up to speed but once they were there, Juvia could feel every little road vibration through the floor of the truck. She glanced at the speedometer and saw one-twenty. She wondered if they'd hit the spikes and flip. Where was her _fear_?

She leaned over, stretching her seatbelt to its maximum, and kissed Gray once on the lips, fiercely. "Just in case."

She watched Gray push _just in case what_ aside. He gripped the wheel with both hands. The barricade was coming up fast. Police were on either side of it with their weapons drawn, far enough away from the site that they wouldn't get caught in the fallout if the truck _did_ flip, but close enough that they could swarm their location when the time came.

"Hold on," Gray said as soon as the features of the first officer became clear. Juvia gripped the dash and the handle above the door. She clenched her teeth so she didn't bite her tongue and kept her eyes open because this seemed like the kind of thing a person watched.

The truck hit the spike strip and a huge sound pierced the air as all four tires exploded almost at once. The truck's backend zagged wildly. Gray yelled as he fought to keep control of the vehicle and Juvia joined him. They travelled in the right direction the right way for a good six hundred meters before everything went _wrong._ Then they turned sideways and metal squealed in Juvia's ear. She hit the end of her seatbelt. It didn't hurt immediately but she knew a truck wasn't supposed to be skidding this way down the road.

Bits of paper, food wrappers, coins, pens, and Gray's shotgun all got scrambled up in the cab. Something hit Juvia's cheek and something else bashed her knee. Another thing clipped her ear and she felt hot blood leak down the side of her face.

The truck rocked and bounced, its roof curved downwards, and then they were on four wheels, upright again and swaying to a stop. Juvia's ears roared and her eyesight was fuzzy. The windshield was spider-webbed a thousand times and the motor had stalled.

She turned her head. She still felt no pain. Adrenaline kept her safe. And Gray. He blinked blood out of his eyes and took in a startled breath but that was all the recovery he needed. He started moving, undoing his seatbelt, and then climbing out of his window. He reached back in for her. Juvia fought with her seatbelt and thought for an instant it wouldn't unclip, but she and Gray pulled with all of their might and it released. He took her by the biceps and she learned how rough he could be, yanking her out of his shattered window with bruising intensity and pushing her in the opposite direction of the swarming cops.

"Go!"

At first, she didn't know what he was asking, then she saw the little canoe trail she spent so much time on as a child and her feet started moving almost too fast for her body to keep up with. Gray was at her side, though he'd stopped at some point to grab his gun from his truck.

Police were yelling. Juvia couldn't hear a damn thing they said. Her feet hit the dirt path and her toes caught on tree roots. Despite her fumbling, she felt like she could fly, she was going so fast, and when she faltered, Gray grabbed her arm and pushed her on.

Trees parted and the grey gleam of river water appeared ahead. The rains had forced the water levels to rise. She thought, _we'll be pulled downstream_ , and she also thought, _that's a risk I'm willing to take if Gray is._

The police opened fire. A tree next to Juvia's head exploded in bits of bark. She ducked and dodged around a tree that had once upon a time fallen on the path. She righted and another tree next to her was chewed through.

Gray slowed and spun, his gun raised. He let off a shot and someone yelled. He was at Juvia's side again in an instant but had to slow again. Juvia stopped with him and glanced back. There were no police on the trails, they'd split up and started to use the trees for cover, but they were littered through the bush and each time one of their guns were fired, Juvia _tasted_ the danger.

"Hurry, Gray!" She grabbed his arm; he shook her off.

"Keep going, I'll cover us and catch up!" he ordered.

"But—"

" _Now_!"

She moved automatically. Behind her, the guns went off again and again; only a few of those were the shotgun's blast, though.

 _Don't look back,_ Juvia ordered herself. _Don't. Not until you're at the water. Don't. Don't_. She was almost there. She counted _ten meters, seven, five, three_. The geography changed abruptly, the ground going from a wet dirt path to sand and gravel. Her feet sunk in and dead mussel shells cut her toes. _One._

Cold water splashed up over her toes and soaked her bare legs. There were rocks under the surface that made her ankles twist and turn. She fell and plunged beneath the surface where the water abruptly changed depth from one foot to four. Immediately, the current grabbed her and started tugging her downstream. Juvia stood; that almost wasn't good enough, the flow was so _strong._

She turned and watched the mouth of the path. Gray appeared, arms pumping at his side, the shotgun's dark barrel shining in the low light. He focused on _her_ and Juvia had a ridiculous thought. She loved him. He was wild. He was freedom.

Gray soared over the ground with unparalleled grace. He was faster than anyone Juvia had ever seen before. He passed the treeline and she felt optimistic. His toes touched the water and that feeling bloomed into something dangerous. Hope.

One stride in and he was up to his calves, the next, his thighs. His third stride never came. A bullet dug through his side and hammered into the water and Gray fell. Juvia watched it all in slow motion, the shocked expression on his face as he came down, down, then splashed.

"Gray!" Driving rain and raised voices took Juvia's voice away. "Gray!" She slogged toward him just as the river grabbed him and dragged him toward its foaming centre. It felt like suicide to leap after him straight into the thalweg but that's just what she did. Water closed over her head and blocked out the light, the sound, the feel of air on her face. She reached blindly and grabbed Gray's necklace. It broke in her hand and was taken away. She reached again and got his shirt. She yanked him in close to her chest and wrapped around him as best she could, protecting his head as the river spun them end over end.

She had no idea where she was, which way was surface and which way was bottom until the river spat her back up and her head broke through the rapids. She recognized where they were in that split second; they'd travelled a long way downstream so incredibly fast. A low head dam waited for them, at the bottom of which was a roar of foamy and dangerous water.

Juvia yelled in defiance and swam for the bank. There was no hope, the water's powerful fingers held her and wouldn't let go. She hit the dam structure and was bent over backwards. Water went into her mouth and up her nose and then she started to fall. Gray almost slipped out of her hold. She adjusted. He stayed.

The bottom of the dam came up quickly. Juvia hit rock, was picked up and forced to the surface again. She felt like a soccer ball caught in the flow, down and up and down again. She took in breaths where she could and protected herself as much as possible on the downwards arc. Her ankle jammed in a rock and twisted wrong. She couldn't tell if it was broken or not. Her elbow cracked into something and her fingers went numb. Her hold on Gray started slipping again.

 _You'll die,_ she thought. _Gray will die. Don't let go and_ do _something._

She was forced up to the surface and sucked in a haggard breath. Undertow grabbed her and yanked her back to a dark place.

_Swim. Swim._

Juvia clutched Gray and swam with every ounce of muscle she had. It felt fruitless. Every time she thought she was going somewhere, she was sucked right back in. She had water in her lungs, too, and an urge to cough that would kill her if she obeyed. Then her free hand brushed against chain link. She grabbed it and though it bit into her fingers, didn't let go.

* * *

Stay away from low head dams. I misrepresented how dangerous they were. Those things will kill you dead.


	4. Chapter 4

Bullets were such funny things. They hadn't feet and hadn't wings. Yet they soared through the air with the greatest of ease and tore through skin wherever they pleased.

Gray's side was on fire. He had no idea which way he would go to find the sky and which way was the bottom of the river. He felt Juvia's fingers curl in the collar of his shirt and focused on that; it was the only thing that seemed real. The swirling and violent greys and blues of the angry river belonged in someone's nightmare, not in his lungs.

His injured side smacked into a rock and Gray gasped in a whole lot of water. He started choking and sputtering but the more he struggled, the worse it got. He couldn't _breathe_. He couldn't _think_ beyond the burning in his lungs. Water rushed past his ears, white noise, Juvia's fingers tightened. His necklace broke and got taken away. Then they were falling and hitting bottom again.

Gray didn't know what happened after that.

* * *

Juvia's muscles were soggy noodles, useless things. Her fingers were cut on the twisted metal links of the gabion basket keeping the river's walls together. She gritted her teeth and started pulling herself to shore through the still-wild water but stopped when above, she heard the _whoosh, whoosh, whoosh_ of the helicopter blades. She sucked in a breath and dunked her head under again, taking Gray with her, hopefully.

She stayed down there until black spots danced in front of her eyes, then, whether the police were gone or not, she resurfaced and took in greedy breaths. The air directly above them was empty; Juvia could see through the trees, the helicopter had moved downstream. She figured she had minutes, at most, to get Gray out of the water and to safety, before the police came back this way and started dredging the low head dam for their bodies.

Gray was easy to move in the water, she was able to pull herself up onto the gabion's shelf and then tug his limp body after her, but as soon as the time came to get him up on dry land, she realized he was _heavy._ And uncooperative.

And the helicopter was coming back.

Juvia set Gray down on his butt, then bent him forward so he was touching his knees. She then turned around so her back was facing his and crouched and linked her arms beneath Gray's armpits. She heaved. She got his torso off the ground so his wound wasn't dragging through the mud like his feet were, then hauled him like she was a packhorse through the thick brambles and shrubs and deciduous trees. Her ankle hurt distantly, like her elbow; she was focused and determined, though, and was able to overcome the pain.

A cottage came out through the trees, squat, unkempt. Juvia bullied her way through shrubs and dropped Gray on the ground so she could try the door. It opened. She was elated until she stepped inside, then she realized that it was occupied.

Its owner yelled and came at her with a broom; her words were lost in Juvia's ears. Juvia hit her and she stopped trying to force them out. Then she locked the door and got to work examining Gray. He wasn't breathing and he was pasty white. Juvia crouched beside him and started doing CPR. His sternum broke after the second compression. She could _feel_ all of the water sloshing in his lungs and his belly, she could _see_ the way it bloated him. She wouldn't think about it, though, using her body weight to compress his chest, plugging his nose and breathing in as much air as she could, and doing it all over again until she was so exhausted, she didn't think she could continue, but did anyway because she couldn't carry this burden of guilt alone.

Eventually, he vomited up all the water he'd guzzled.

* * *

"Raindrops are such funny things."

They were.

"They haven't feet or haven't wings."

Ridiculous.

"Yet they sail through the air with the greatest of ease."

Yes.

"And dance on the street, Wherever they please."

Gray opened his eyes. He was lying down. There was a ceiling above his head and it was made of bare wood. The walls around him were the same. There were shadows in the room that were broken up by a gentle golden light. _Candle,_ he thought, and by that light, he saw a battered girl sitting in front of a large, dusty mirror. There was a pair of scissors in her hand. She cut curling blue locks and watched them fall to the ground. She hummed the end of her poem and then started again.

"Juvia?"

She set down her scissors and turned. The ends of her hair brushed her chin. Her smile was hollow and tired. "You're awake."

Maybe? His chest felt _wrong_. Spongy. Rotten when he touched it.

"Your sternum is broken. I had to. You drowned." Her voice was carefully blank.

"Oh." He thought he hurt too much to be dead but he still asked, "Did we make it?"

She said, "Yes. I pulled you out of the water."

"And the police?"

"They came here," she said. "The lady told them she hadn't seen us and they left."

"There is a lady?"

"She used to be a nurse," Juvia said airily. "She showed me how to make you better." She touched her side. Gray became aware of the pain there, too. It was a deep panging that separated it from the radiating feeling in his chest. Cotton pulled aside in his mind and he remembered running. Running over a dirt path, running from bullets. He had been shot. He pulled down the blanket and looked but couldn't see anything but angry red skin around a white gauze bandage.

"Where is she now?"

"Juvia fixed it." Her bottom lip was sucked between her teeth. Gray recognized that look. He wondered if the cycle would _ever_ be broken or if they'd always have to leave a trail of bodies. _This is Dad's fault._ He hated his father more then than he had _before,_ which was really saying something. His old man had been a bastard, first insisting that he stay out of the business (though that may have been mostly on his mother's request) and then almost getting him killed for it. If Deliora hadn't killed him, Gray may have done the deed himself after everything he went through.

"What did you do with the body?" The old Gray Fullbuster would have asked the question of bad people with righteous indignation. _What_ did _you_ do with the body? Accusatory. _This_ Gray Fullbuster, he asked with concern. What did you _do_ with the body? This Gray Fullbuster was worried about circumventing the law, not upholding it.

"Buried it."

"Deep?"

She nodded.

He sighed and put his head back on the pillow.

"Juvia had to. That lady was going to hurt us," she said with the same manic look in her eye she'd had when she told him she'd killed her boyfriend.

 _Had to_. How many times had he justified his actions with those words? Gray pushed at the thoughts. _She did what you couldn't_. He'd already learned what being soft got them. Killing one man may have saved a woman's life, but he'd hesitated at the gas station and now Juvia was thrice the killer.

"Gray?"

He turned his head. Juvia drifted over to him like a ghost. He noticed she was in someone else's long white nightgown. The colour made her blued skin glow. Pretty. She was pretty even when she was beaten. "I did the right thing, right?"

She seemed to need to hear him say it. Gray obliged her. "Yes."

Tension rushed from her shoulders. She sat beside him and took his hand and put his palm against her cheek. She felt cold until she kissed him, and then when she deepened the kiss, she felt like she could burn him up, she was so greedy and needy. He liked it, he needed her hunger and her gentleness. It helped him forget everything.

* * *

The sun was setting when Juvia announced she was going to make him something to eat. Gray waited until he was alone in the small room then flipped on the tiny TV in the corner with a remote he found on the nightstand by his head.

There were only two channels that came in, and those were the free ones the antenna picked up. One of those was Thomas the Tank Engine, the other was the news. He watched police trawl the bottom of the Rouge for what the newscaster said was the fourth time. One of the officers came up with a cross necklace, someone else with Juvia's shoe, it had gotten wedged in the crotch of a tree close to shore where the high water line had been.

The newscaster said, _"A month ago, ex-Sargent Gray Fullbuster resigned his commission with the Magnolia Police Department and dispatched the man police believed to be responsible for the slaughter of Mister Fullbuster's wife, daughter, mother and father six months before. Today, the hunt has come to a tragic end. The ex-Sargent was tracked to the Eastern Border where a short shootout with local police ensued._

_"Mister Fullbuster and Miss Lockser chose to take their chances with the river rather than with the police, though recent storm events have made the waters dangerous. They were quickly lost. Efforts to locate them will continue but experts say it is unlikely either he or Miss Lockser will be found alive._

Gray turned off the TV to mourn in silence.


End file.
